Music for Spiritual Exploration

When I need to be persuaded yet again that reality includes transcendence and the spiritual, I usually turn to music rather than opening the writings of some theologian or other (although those help a lot too!). Here are a few pieces I’d recommend for this purpose…

Let me also mention Gustav Holst’s Hymn of Jesus which is not only beautiful music but is fascinating as a very rare instance of the setting to music of an extracanonical Christian text (Hovhaness has done the same with the Odes of Solomon; Joaquin Rodrigo, famous for his Concierto de Aranjuez, has a setting of some Qumran hymns). I played the Holst piece for my “Heresy” class the last time I taught it, not least because this helps students realize that these extracanonical texts had a role in Christian worship for those that valued them.